Enemy Seeking to Cripple Production in Iran, Leader Warns

A group of Iranian workers met with Ayatollah Khamenei at the Imam Khomeini Hussainiyyah of Tehran on Sunday.

In the gathering, the Leader praised the local workers for their great motivation in various fields after the victory of the Islamic Revolution, such as in the military, economic and political arenas.

Denouncing the global arrogance for its plots in the economic sphere to cripple the production in Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei said such hostile policy has become clearer in the past 15 years.

All of the sanctions against Iran have been imposed with the purpose of knocking out production in the country, the Leader noted, adding that the workers served in the front line and stymied the enemy’s plot.

“Workers stood at the forefront of the fight against the enemies’ plots to disrupt the country’s production and did not allow the conspiracies to materialize. Workers played the pivotal role in this regard,” Ayatollah Khamenei said.

“Among the main policies of arrogant powers since the victory of the Islamic Revolution (in 1979) has been to grind the country’s production to a halt,” he stated.

The Leader also stressed that laborers have aborted fiendish attempts to exploit their demands as a sign of popular protests and have definitively proven their allegiance to the Islamic Revolution and the Islamic establishment.

Earlier this year, Ayatollah Khamenei stated that the enemies are waging a war against Iran’s economy in order to bring it to collapse and pit the people against the establishment.

“The goal of the enemies in this war has been the collapse of the Iranian economy; that was their intention. Now, the collapse of the economy was, of course, a prelude in order to set the people against the Islamic Republic by destroying the Iranian economy and to carry out their malicious political intentions in this way,” the Leader said in an address to a group of Iranian producers and entrepreneurs in Tehran on January 30.

Ayatollah Khamenei hailed Iranian producers, entrepreneurs, and workers as “officers” of the battle against the enemies’ economic war.  

“The country's stronghold of production and economy is alive; thank God, it is standing. The army that stood against the enemy - the officers of this holy defense - were the entrepreneurs and capable economic managers. Its warriors were also workers. The workers were the sincere and earnest warriors of this battle. You and all economic actors share in this honor of preserving the country's economy,” the Leader said.

Ayatollah Khamenei reiterated his oft-repeated line that officials should not tie the country's economy to the results of negotiations currently underway in Vienna to remove US sanctions on Iran.

The Leader also described production as a struggle in the path of Allah, which is known as the principle of jihad in Islam.

“The resistance of the producers against the attack on the economy and the enemy's efforts to prevent the sale of oil and gas and cut foreign exchange resources and against its plans to block Iran's foreign trade is in fact jihad and one of the greatest acts of worship.”

The enemy’s plans to “conquer the production stronghold” of Iran as part of its economic war on the country have failed, Ayatollah Khamenei added.